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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Skinned - Robin Wasserman

Lia Khan was in a terrible accident, her car got hit head on by a semi truck. Her body was badly damaged and wasn't going to live. Her parents decide to keep her alive in an artificial body and her mind is scanned and inputted into where the brain would be. When she is ready to go home her parents welcome the new Lia with open arms, her sister Zo doesn't. When Lia goes back to school she finds out the her friends are now her sister's friends, and they start turning on Lia saying that she isn't the Lia the used to know. Even her boyfriend leaves her and she is alone. She finds a friend in a boy named Auden who wants to be like her, a human inside a machine. She also goes to this group that is all people who are now inside artificial bodies. Lia decides she doesn't want to be like them and "walks away" from who and what she really is. After a few months she meets up with other mech heads, and they try to teach what it means to be mech. They can jump off cliffs into water and not get hurt, the can get shot and not die, they can go into places undetected by the bio-sensors. One day Auden falls into the river and is badly hurt. When she visits him he tells her that he can't be put into a new body because of a predisposition for mental disorder and/or decay in his brain. She then realizes that she can't go on living as a human in a machine, she is a machine with human memories.

An interesting look at what it means to be human and what humans think of machines acting like humans. A question to ask yourself is would you want to keep on living in a body that won't grow old? If you do would you want to make the decision or have your family make it for you, or would you rather die and live in the memories of your family and friends.